Well, Actually Too Late!
What do you do when something you always thought was a good thing starts to look like the root cause of our demise? You start asking questions. And you start thinking about the evidence. That is what I've been doing for the past many years after seeing the evidence of failures of some of America's most treasured institutions.
I have to be blunt. Capitalism, corporatism, and profit taking are killing the planet, or large and growing swaths of it. Politics, governance, and the education system are acting as willing accomplices to assist. Of course, it is really the people who work within these institutions who are at fault, both for shaping them to their current embodiments, and for promoting them as good and worthwhile. Ultimately we humans are at fault for being just too ignorant and unwise to see what incredible damage we are doing to the Earth and even ourselves.
I won't recapitulate what all of the various problems are that we are causing or even entertain a conversation about them since the evidence for them is so abundant, and a little simple connecting of the dots will lead to the understanding of how they are all interconnected and will collectively exacerbate our predicament. When the planet is significantly altered beyond recognition there is a very high likelihood that the vast majority of humanity will suffer the same fate. I and many aware writers have covered this before. Only, to what avail?
After watching this drama unfold for the last one and a half decades (and noting the accelerated pace with which it is doing so) I have drawn the conclusion that absolutely nothing can be done at this juncture to mitigate these problems. And even if it could no one with the ability to make a difference will endeavor to do so. I have given up completely on the political and business leadership in the developed world. I've given up on the scientific prowess of the US. I've given up on our education system. Put simply, there is, in my opinion, no institution or group of people who (have the power/effectiveness and) can or would make the effort to change anything that might make even a modicum of difference. There are many people who do see and do try to help, but just like me, have no influence that could conceivably reach the scale needed, at least, to lessen the pain about to be inflicted. There are many, like Bill McKibben, who have relatively high public visibility but cannot seem to move the conversation, let alone action, fast enough to have any bearing on the ultimate outcome.
At least that is what I think will be the case until it is so obvious that we are taking a leap from the high dive into an empty pool. Then, I imagine, everyone will start doing something, in panic, of course. Lots of finger pointing and rending of loin cloths, but it will be too late. Most unfortunate. This is pessimism at its worst, I admit, as well as cynicism. But I come by these attitudes honestly by having opened my eyes to what is happening and seeing what is not happening that should. And it always comes back to the same baseline. Homo sapiens should be called Homo callidus, “man the clever” and definitely not “man the wise.”
The Profit Picture
The two things that are killing us are actually variations on a single theme. They appear as biological and individual economic profit taking. The former translates into exponentially rising biomass concentrated in a single species, us. The latter translates into consumption for the sake of consumption and at whatever speed we can obtain. Both have their roots in the biology of individual organisms. Every organism that ever existed has attempted to maximize its biological profit (excess material and energy over and above that needed to maintain) in order to reproduce as much as possible. Thus we human individuals are effectively programmed to always seek to maximize our resource consumption. However, for us, due to our technological ability to consume exosomatic energies and aggregate material goods above and beyond our mere biomass, we are acting like a catalyst for a runaway process of extraction. And, extraction at rates substantially higher than nature can replenish. Worse still, at the end of consumption, the output waste streams, are coming out at rates greater than the environment can absorb. Ergo, depletion on the input end and poisoning on the output end.
Previous biological entities were always held in check to one degree or another. Most species evolved to be relatively specialized for econiches and when climates changed or invasive species came into the picture, the populations of natives were stressed, as often as not to extinction. All species have had to compete with other species, and individuals generally have had to compete with conspecifics, for scarce resources. This competition led to maintaining relatively steady-state levels of population so that the profit taking behaviors never could cause the species to expand beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. There have been a few notable exceptions and those have been the causes of significant evolutionary events, massive die-offs. The Great Oxygen Catastrophe thought to be caused by the rise of photosynthesis in Cyanobacteria was the first significant time when living systems caused the demise of most other living systems. If you are an oxygen breathing creature you probably don't think that that event was such a bad deal. But if all the other anoxic bacteria alive at the time had been conscious they probably would have thought it was terrible!
The point is that the rule for life on Earth has been an elaborate set of checks and balances that help maintain the biosphere in a sometimes wildly fluctuating, but generally stationary steady-state. Humans have seemingly ruined the balance. I say seemingly because we won't really know what the outcome will be until it comes out! One thing is almost certainly true — we have become the cause of the next great die-off for the biosphere and that may include us.
What is Profit?
I have argued repeatedly that economic profit is nothing more than biological profit gone out of control. Biological profit is just that excess above maintenance and repair requirements that go to reproduction. In nature reproduction is a messy affair with the majority of offspring dying before reaching sexual maturity themselves. Thus evolution has selected for individuals who are compelled to maximize their profit taking behaviors because in most cases the profits will turn to losses with only a tiny proportion making it into the next generation.
Economics is nothing more than an extension into the exosomatic domain of physiology. In “Our Energy Cocoon” I showed how each of us is surrounded by an exosomatic cocoon or wrappers of energy and, by extension, material goods. All of it doing nothing more than providing convenience, speed, and relative security but nothing that isn't part of our normal physiological makeup. However, this cocoon has altered our psychical makeup considerably. We've gotten spoiled. Worse, we actually have come to feel entitled to these cocoons and fully expect them to remain in place forever. Judging by watching people on the streets and public places, even in their cars while driving, texting and talking on their smart phones, these cocoons, provided by technology, are the only “real” world they know.
So economic profit is just the expansion of biological profit amplified through the energy cocoon. And because of our incredible cleverness we have essentially buffered ourselves from the ordinary biological stresses that would keep our exploitations in check. Homo callidus, the only symbol-processing, tool-making hominid that evolution launched on Earth, is both blessed and cursed. Blessed by an ability to attend to the effort and time needed to accomplish biological profit taking and to then imagine ways that he might be able to take shortcuts. Our capacity for affordance, the ability to see how to use existing things in new ways, plus our capacity to combine elements in our minds gives us the ability to create new tools that solve the problems we wanted to solve.
We are cursed because while evolution produced our level of cleverness it was just getting started to select for sapience, the basis of gaining wisdom, in any meaningful way. We are smart and creative enough to know how to solve immediate, local problems but not wise enough to consider what the long-term consequences will be by doing so.
And consider the nature of what we might call problems. Our original biological problems, the same ones shared with all other life, were 1) how do we get enough food, shelter, etc; and 2) how do we keep from being eaten. And we share the same motivation as all living systems, doing this with the least effort necessary. Thus humans started early to find ways to get the most with the least effort and given our ability to make tools that translates into busting out of the biological boundaries. Economic problems are extensions of the biological ones but can be phrased differently. How can I do less work to achieve the same end? How can I get this done faster? How can I get more done in the same or less amount of time? And as soon as our symbol-processing language formulates those kinds of questions our tool making cleverness kicks into high gear.
But look at what happened. Our biological problems are based on true needs, those of survival and fitness. But our economic problems start to be based not on needs but on wants. And wants are controlled by the limbic system, not the prefrontal cortex, which for most people is used just to fulfill those wants. Are our wants legitimate? Do they fulfill a higher purpose in humans then mere existence? Should we not want to be profitable?
And consider this. Why would you not use a sharpened long stick to kill game instead of chasing them down and clunking them on the head with a rock — if you could make such a stick? Tools give us leverage, mechanical advantage. They save time and effort. They can increase our insurance of succeeding. They can increase our access to exosomatic energy. Why would we not use them?
Of course we would and we did. By doing so we gained greater fitness than any species ever. And biology being what it is, and us with very poorly developed sapience we did what nature intended (metaphorically of course). We made economic profits and were damned glad to do so. We didn't ask, as I presume a truly wise person would, “Should we keep making even more profits?” We didn't think, “Once we have enough shouldn't we stop?” And we didn't ever ask, “What is enough anyway?” Those questions would have taken too much wisdom for creatures who were just starting to gain experience in an economic life. Besides, the world was so empty then. How could killing a mammoth for a bit of meat, leaving the rest to scavengers, be a bad idea? In our drive to make economic profits we succumbed to what is now called the Jevons paradox.
Biological profit taking requires controls from outside the system to prevent excesses. And humans figured out how to break out of that situation over one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Economic profit took over. And it felt really good. By the time agriculture was well underway as a new lifestyle, profit taking became the acquisition and hoarding of grains and other food stuffs and the acquisition of material wealth by those who controlled the land.
How to Make Economic Profits
It all starts with real estate. Capture and control access to land. Extract a raw resource from that land (like food, game, minerals, water, etc.). Process it into something somebody thinks is usable/desirable. Sell it for more than what it cost you to process it. Since you paid nothing to nature for the extracted resource, you don't consider that cost. And then, with the profit, you can reinvest in more real estate (later it would be capital) so you can make even more profit. There is seemingly no end, except maybe the availability of land. But back in the day that didn't really seem to be a problem. Profits could grow indefinitely it seemed.
One of the most ‘clever’ profit-taking schemes has been the banking system. Banks and rapidly traded equities can appear to make money out of nothing and then record profits from fees on the transactions. Now that has got to be the ultimate in economic profit taking. No real product, doesn't even need real estate or capital to back it up (these days). Just create money and pay yourself handsomely for getting away with it.
Here is the kicker. In a consumerist market economy you can charge whatever the buyers are willing to pay. Income minus recognized costs equals profit. And thanks to our old biological mandate we try to maximize profits in the short run. Then we tell ourselves how good we feel about the virtuous nature of greed! You made somebody happy and you contributed to the GDP. Moreover you now have more wealth; you can be a hedonist consumer and further boost the GDP. What could be a better system?
Resources are mostly finite, or renewable on such long time scales as to be effectively finite relative to the rate of extraction. Over the course of human history we have cycled through all of the viable substitutes so the idea that when a finite resource becomes too expensive we will simply move on to the next resource is no longer valid. What, honestly, fully replaces fossil fuels? What can replace fresh, drinkable water?
The idea of profit taking at a maximum rate is now so deeply engrained in our cultures that it can hardly be questioned. Indeed, high profit taking has been a major factor in investing in even greater technologies. And they indirectly funded research and education. So, can we say that they were really all that bad? It depends on pace and extent. We long ago passed too fast and too much. Our profit taking has now far exceeded the planet's ability to cope except in the sense of having a tizzy fit. We now have a whole new set of interrelated problems that will not likely be solved by inventing something new. In fact they won't be solved at all in the sense of us coming out happy. And all of those economic profits we've been so proud of, kiss them goodbye.
Back to Biological Profit Taking
The only way forward now is the way backward. Humanity will have to take a time out from its energy cocoon-based life. It is time to go back to biological profit taking and far fewer individuals living on the planet if there is ever going to be some kind of settling down. The planet will take care of imposing the punishment. We are witnessing the on-set of a population bottleneck scenario and the pruning process will be chaotic and definitely not pretty.
When the dust settles, if there are humans left standing, then life will be very different from what we have come to believe is normal. The human animals will once again be constrained to just the biological profits needed to maintain life and reproduce. I do expect that the few remaining will try to retain some semblance of an energy cocoon to the extent of Neolithic or early Bronze Age lifestyles augmented with knowledge of permaculture and a few more modern tools that can be manufactured with minimal energy inputs. For a very long time thereafter human beings will once again have to adapt to environments with very limited resources. And they will have to evolve beyond the limited capacities they have for sapience.
Possibilities
Sapience and eusociality go hand-in-hand in human beings, unlike the mechanisms in eusocial insects, for example. Eusociality is based on cooperative motivations, that is the desire to work with others for the common good. It is the essence of socialism! Cooperation is not the same as altruism, even so-called “reciprocal altruism.” Altruism is defined as a form of sacrifice in which the altruist lowers his or her reproductive fitness in order increase that of the recipient. reciprocal altruism is considered a mutual benefiting behavior over time, similar to the tit-for-tat strategy in the iterated prisoner's dilemma game.
Cooperation does not carry the weight of up or down changes in fitness of individuals, as is the case for altruism, and can include groups of people rather than just one-on-one. Cooperation on work tasks generally improves the fitness of the whole group rather than select individuals (who may still compete for internal resources in other circumstances). The question is what underlies the motivation to cooperate if it is not expectation of a payoff?
I come at this from a different approach than just psychology (except for the psychology of wisdom). The components of sapience provide some clues as to why people have some subconscious motivation to be cooperative with their fellows. From my previous work I claim that sapience is composed of four basic cognitive loci. One locus is what I have called moral sentiment, which includes the motivational aspects of all that we do. Another locus is that of higher order judgment that is our subconscious master model of how the world works that influences our intelligence decision making apparatus through intuition. This is the wisdom part. A model of how the world works is simply too complex and large for us to work on consciously. Our conscious minds (working memory available to conscious examination) have limits of attention and so most of what we know of the world is stored in tacit knowledge and only surfaces through subconscious processing as judgments.
The other two loci provide more specific, yet generally subconsciously processed, cognitive capacities, and these are what more directly affect cooperative behavior as the default mode (aggression and selfishness are now thought to be triggered by specific situations or as due to brain defects). The first is systems perspective/thinking. This facility, if sufficiently operative, is what helps shape perceptions and guides integration of new information into our tacit knowledge base. It is also responsible for making us look at the larger picture, or attempting to put instances into whole contexts. Systems thinking allows the mind to encompass the whole group and situate the group in the larger environment (which includes other groups).
The second is strategic perspective/thinking, which is the ability to model the world (along with the self) and, in essence, run simulations far out it time and space. It is the ability to use your systems knowledge to see what the likely scenarios for the future look like taking into account all of the model veracity that your judgment and systems thinking can bring to bear.
The combined action of these four loci (which is cooperation!) produces an automatic subconscious motivation and action toward cooperation with fellow beings. Anyone who has been an observer of the world for very long and has built up a veridical model of how it works can feel the long term consequences for whole groups of cooperation being for everyone's good. Moral sentiments include desires to make others happy and to not make them inadvertently unhappy. But it also includes desires to see those who do not cooperate (so-called “cheaters” in game-theoretic treatments of social and evolutionary psychology) punished for not doing so. This is experienced as emotional responses, joy at seeing someone smile at you or anger/disgust at someone's selfish behavior.
Those emotional responses are built into our limbic brains and are frequently our downfall as a species. But sapience depends on a relatively new kind of mediation of the limbic areas responsible for generating emotional responses. Von Economo neurons, also called spindle cells, connect the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with those areas of the limbic brain, with high-speed transmission. It is now thought (with building evidence) that these cells allow the PFC to down modulate the emotion-producing responses so that the PFC has time to evaluate the whole picture and decide if a strong emotional response is appropriate. Wise people have the capacity to throttle their emotions, such as anger or hatred, to an extent not generally seen in ordinary people. I contend that higher sapience means even greater ability to manage the emotions. For example, a wise person may feel an urge to exact retribution on a cheater, but may find ways to deal with the person short of physical punishment.
So my argument is that there is a possibility that humans may evolve even greater sapience capacity as a result of a future stressful environment that will require cooperation among members of groups and not necessarily mean competition between groups per se. Some new research in early Homo evolution is suggesting that we were already finding ways for groups to cooperate more than compete. Group selection requires that there is some competition between groups in order to provide selective pressure on greater cooperation within the groups. But then it also depends on how one perceives who the WE are and who the THEM are. Our capacity to belong to many orthogonal groups might also allow us to consider a hierarchy of groups (like tribes in a region belonging to a single nation).
I contend that humans were in the process of evolving greater sapience before the advent of agriculture. After the demise of civilization the same situation will emerge but with new and more challenging selection forces. Hominids have speciated many times over the last, roughly, eight million years. There is a growing body of evidence that it was usually tied to climate changes and a need to maximize adaptability. The mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA evidence also points to a bottleneck event in human prehistory about 70-80 thousand years ago in Southern Africa. So this story has been told before.
No one can possibly want what is about to happen (actually is already happening) to us. But I take some comfort in the idea that a very long-term good may yet evolve from our travails. The species may go extinct, but the genus will survive.
And What of Profits?
Biology isn't only about unchecked expansion. There have been many instances of biological systems learning to self-regulate their own growth for the good of the group. Eukaryotic cells, and individual multicellular forms are composed of heterogeneous components that have learned to cooperate and to manage (generally) their individual mandate to take a profit (grow or reproduce). So unconstrained growth is not the absolute rule. Cooperation, communications, and a hierarchical self-regulation system can allow a system to achieve a mature status and then enter a steady-state condition until senescence sets in.
Truly sapient humans can use their high intelligence to understand this phenomena and use it to self-regulate their biological profit taking to be in balance with the rest of the Ecos. Rather than depend on outside forces to do the regulating, strategic and systems thinking humans with the motivation for balance and harmony and the superior understanding of how the world works can make judgments to not enter into the trap of economic profit taking. They can be both smarter and wiser than what we witness today. Most members of the current species are definitely not wise enough and, though smart enough to know better, are not sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to reason through the evidence. Most are willfully ignorant because they are not wise enough to think through what the evidence is telling them. I just read an article about Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) who continues to assert that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by liberals in order to justify a global socialist government! What a f***ing idiot (excuse my colloquialism)! How does he do this? He was smart enough to get elected (I'm guessing by an equally ignorant electorate). But he simply ignores the evidence and uses conservative talking points (all based on untruths) as if they were evidence.
Sapience, even at its modest average level in our species, keeps most of us able to not be so stupid. But, unfortunately that level is still not sufficient to make all of us alert to what we are doing to the world by insisting on taking economic profits as our god-given right. So when people like Inhofe and most politicians, CEOs, bankers, economists, and even scientists and educators keep telling us that greed is good the vast majority of us buy it and keep on trying to get raises or pay the least we can for goods (so that manufacturers have to seek cheaper labor markets in other parts of the world). We've shot ourselves in both feet (all of our feet combined) multiple times and we can no longer stand, as a civilization or even as a species.
Say goodbye to profits and the institutions that promote them.
@George - I was lost for words after reading this astonishingly clear piece. It's one of those rare moments when it's perfectly justifiable to sign off the argument with Q.E.D.
Regarding the one-trick pony of capitalism, I've felt a fish out of water for as long as I can remember, and I do wonder how many among the seven billion have deliberately shunned excessive profit-taking as a life goal. If the number was known, we could feel more confident that there's a quorum of seed corn lurking in Homo calidus for an eventual new speciation favoring cooperation.
In the meantime, the puzzle is what to do with our remaining years. As you rightly say, nothing can be done to change the outcome of unbridled profiteering. But just existing merely seems to condone the biocide that's going on apace. I've heard people saying that we may as well enjoy the ride - but this brings to mind the last moments of Dr Strangelove!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlSQAZEp3PA
One good thing: I can finally park the ages-old burning question of what is the 'point' of living. I'm at peace with the conclusion that there is no point, in any meaningful sense.
Many thanks for taking the trouble to share your conclusions.
Posted by: Oliver | August 20, 2013 at 04:42 PM
@Oliver - I disagree that there is no point in living in any meaningful sense. However, I suppose it depends on what kind of "point" you are trying to make. If you are talking about changing human nature, then you're right, it's pointless. Human nature will not change, en masse, over any time frame meaningful to individual humans. Ditto human behavior, absent present, in-your-face, existential crisis.
On the other hand, if you are talking about individuals and their lives, then I think there is a point. Any number actually. I think you can consciously work towards being wiser. I think you can actively work towards treating those around you as well as possible. I think you can work towards enjoying life and those around you as much as possible, while still minimizing your own negative short and long term impacts on the world. And so on.
Will any of this change human nature or human behavior on a larger scale? Nope. Will it prevent the bottleneck and impacts that George and others have described so well? Nope. But that doesn't make it pointless.
Just one man's opinion.
Posted by: Brian M | August 21, 2013 at 07:48 AM
made a small translation into german...until the jevons paradoxon. the rest is made by a mashine:
http://peakaustria.blogspot.co.at/2013/08/entweder-die-gewinne-gehen-oder-wir.html
Posted by: peakaustria | August 21, 2013 at 08:34 AM
1. It really doesn't require much sapience to understand that infinite growth in a finite system is a logical impossibility, and
2. After reading Psychopath Test by Ronson, I'm convinced that there's a mental "hardwiring" that is controlling the political and corporate leadership which is insistently leading the Great Unwashed down the path of self-destruction.
Posted by: Molly | August 21, 2013 at 10:00 AM
The problem is not with profits the problem is with how profits are defined. Were profits to account for all externalities; were sapience fully developed, there would be no problem with profits. Externalities would be considered. Capitalism and corporatism revolve around the taking of the dollar, nothing else is taken into account. The not taking into account the 'else' that is ignored is the problem.
I agree with your dichotomy of clever Vs. wise, calidus Vs. sapiens. We are afflicted with a crippled rash wisdom which fully engages mental faculties but then stop thinking activity the instant a technical solution is perceived as the answer to any problem under consideration.
This is why money is called the 'root of all evil'. A cliche that often masquerades and is misperceived as deep thinking. There is some knowledge in the cliche, it's just not so deep as to assume a religious significance.
Money engages our automatic tendency to stop thinking as soon as a problem is solved. It encourages high efficient technical solutions at the expense of considering any but immediate and obvious negative consequences of a technical solution. If a technical solution is not immediately perceived as toxic its novelty will always make it better than sliced bread. From an evolutionary point of view being stubborn and thick headed and in a rush to move on to the next problem had advantages.
Education and wisdom overcomes, but particular attitudes can derail the acquisition of wisdom. Not everbody makes it. If it takes all kinds or not as a society we sure got em all. Consequently we might actually be OK as a species but have totally allowed the wrong people to run the show.
We are what appears to be a spectacular failure but I can't go with the emerging zeitgeist of:
"absolutely nothing can be done at this juncture to mitigate these problems. And even if it could no one with the ability to make a difference will endeavor to do so"
This is getting to be a popular point of view and not limited to the wise. In fact it has just begun infecting the wise. Certain forces are actively encouraging its adoption (not you).
Fight the infection because:
The problem we face is that – in a totally inclusive sweep from Los Angeles via London to Madrid and Athens – we have an abject failure of political opposition alongside apathetic citizenry.
And from the same article:
"Overall, my feeling is that it is in the nature of a few in our species – the core obsessive hunter gatherers – to be greedy, ruthless and selfish, always pushing on too hard without thinking of the consequences. But then, when the chickens come home to roost, to bribe, cheat, deceive – and eventually deny the reality of their stupidity."
Its not true that nothing can be done at this juncture to mitigate problems. I share your frustration but as long as we can make another smile were mitigating.
K-Dog
Posted by: K-Dog | August 21, 2013 at 04:14 PM
Reading your 'Sapience', I thought you might enjoy this.
From the novel 'We' by E. Zamiatin
Fancy
It is a worm that gnaws black wrinkles on one's forehead. It is a fever that drives one to run further and further , even though "further" may begin where happiness ends. It is the last barricade on our road to happiness.
Rejoice! This Barricade has been blasted at last! The road is open!
The latest discovery of our State science is that there is a center for fancy-- a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain. Triple treatment of this knot with X-rays will cure you of your fancy."
A duplicate post because the Google account Typepad signed me in as was not my Google account. Strange happenings, I hope it is not X-rays.-- K-Dog :)
Posted by: K-Dog | August 21, 2013 at 08:01 PM
@ K-Dog - It would be more accurate if you said, "In my opinion it's not true that nothing can be done." You are dealing in obligatory hope, not verifiable fact, when you infer that the core problem is the failure of political opposition and apathetic citizens. Ask yourself: Why has opposition failed? Why are citizens apathetic? The answers lead us to the realization that lack of sapience is the cause, not some perceived moral failure that could be countered in some magical way. IMHO.
@Brian M - Thanks for commenting and I appreciate your viewpoint that individuals' lives aren't pointless if they work on wizing up, help others where possible and enjoy life with care for the biosphere, etc. But this doesn't change my own view, having in my own way conducted myself along the lines you suggest and yet still finding myself an outcast in a world that is overwhelmingly bestial and survivalist (in the Darwinian sense). I may have made some minor impact along the way, but the waves keep crashing over my sandcastles and wiping clean any sign of my passing through this place. This sounds depressing but I actually feel freed of existential angst, which afflicts many humans and is an entire waste of energy.
Posted by: Oliver | August 22, 2013 at 02:10 AM
Friends of mine from university became very wealthy indeed in the City of London and Wall Street, from scratch.
Being a total drop-out myself, (I'm a lowly craftsman)I've taken great pleasure in examining the way their minds work while their careers have progressed.
Unlike many who criticize the rich from the outside, I have the advantage of studying them while just having social drinks and so on (even better when we get drunk, then the beans -the ambitions, the fears,- are really spilled!)
Despite being highly educated,unostentatious, types,they tend to reveal in their unguarded moments an almost infantile delight in profits, real or prospective, which is not in accord with the mental sophistication they show otherwise: most notably, they shy away from considering wider implications of their actions once the profit opportunity has been identified. They will admit to 'enjoying the game', and also to being remunerated far beyond their personal deserts.
Their fear of loss is equally unsophisticated and childish, and their desire for more - beyond all personal or family need - is unlimited.
People of lesser intellect, and wealth are, I find, much more likely to be philosphical about loss and gain: to my friends, it's a catastrophe.
Of course, one comes across a lot of crude and naked greed in the lower classes,too - most are aware however that the 'golden prizes' will never be theirs,and so by default they become better people; but to study it in the mentally sophisticated is highly rewarding. Lack of self-knowledge, above all, is what comes to mind.
We are indeed, Mr Mobus, in the wrong hands.
But don't blame the species as a whole folks! And no need to be grim-faced:if the Titanic is going down ,one can at least play a charming tune on one's instrument, to appease fears and beguile the wait.....and maybe even create some joy?
Posted by: Cantab | August 22, 2013 at 04:26 AM
Maybe human are just stupid and life is chaotic and random. This essay is just a bunch of useless worlds
Posted by: justnobody | August 22, 2013 at 09:43 AM
K-Dog - It would be more accurate if you said, "In my opinion it's not true that nothing can be done." You are dealing in obligatory hope, not verifiable fact
No, I can't agree. It is not my opinion. There are a myriad of futures which lie before us, an infinity of futures and that is a mathematical fact. Some futures have more pain and suffering in them than others and the specific future that comes to pass we most definitely do have an influence over.
It would be extreme hubris to say we can choose our future. Politicians claim that all the time, they lie. But to deny that humans influence the future is plain wrong. Humans have done an excellent job ruining the environment so far, sad proof, but proof.
One problem with thinking is that we arbitrarily make binary distinctions and classify when we should not. Without training a person has extreme difficulty suspending judgement. But then why should they, they know no better.
I agree with you that the human race has insufficient sapience but there are other factors at play and concentrating over-much on the sapience aspect reflects despair.
To say that "absolutely nothing can be done" is a message of despair and false.
I am aware of the difference between obligatory hope and verifiable fact. The verifiable fact is wise people can influence outcomes and if even a tiny mote of pain and suffering can be eliminated from the wasteland of hurt then success has been realized. An outcome has been altered however small the change may be.
An issue perhaps is that you do not see the outcome being influenced in any way you personally see meaningful.
But:
“Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together”
Jonathan Swift
Posted by: K-Dog | August 22, 2013 at 11:25 AM
@Oliver,
The concept of a "point" to living is interesting. The word sort of implies (at least to me) a greater purpose, and there is also implied a very personal aspect. So in a sense I would have to agree with that observation. OTOH: is there a purpose to life itself? Or, rather, a point to evolution. In my reading of evolution I have surmised that there is, at least a trajectory. And to me that does imply a kind of greater purpose, not in the religious sense, but in the sense of just how the universe works.
As for the individual aspect of a "point", I think Brian M. is on to something.
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@Peakaustria,
Thanks. Hope it strikes a nerve in Austria (I had a wonderful time touring Austria a few years ago. Learned to love espresso, Vienna style.)
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@Molly,
You are right, of course. It doesn't take sapience to grok the impossibility of infinite growth. But I think it does require sapience to not ignore it! Thanks for the tip on Ronson. Will try to check it out when my book is done!
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@K-dog,
The actual phrase is: "For the LOVE of money is the root of all kinds of evil...", 1 Timothy 6:10.
And I think there is wisdom in that statement. Money is not the problem, it is a useful tool for communicating value and energy usage. The problem is when people lose sight of its real role and pursue it as wealth in and of itself.
Consider:
If we were really FIT (OK) as a species would we be letting the wrong people run the show?
I would be more than happy to change my opinion if this can be shown to be true. The evidence I see and the magnitude of the predicament lead me to my conclusion (but always tentative!)
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@Cantab,
I didn't mean to imply it is a matter of "blame" of the species. Our human condition is simply what it is because of the way evolution works. When I rail against TPTB it is more a matter of reporting on the phenomena as evidence of the weak sapience in the species. Ultimately I suppose I think of my message as a signal to those out there who are not so weak (in sapience) to be prepared. Or something to that effect.
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@Justnobody,
Perhaps you are right. Please feel free to ignore my future posts!
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@K-dog again,
I do not feel despair. When I say nothing can be done, I mean in the sense of solving the problems such that "humanity" is effectively spared a truly horrific future (the bottleneck). And I mean that there is nothing that even a coalition of world leaders could do. Drastic climate change is baked in the cake and even if we were to stop emitting carbon today, the world will warm another one and a half degree C or so. And you know that such a cutoff is not going to happen.The climate change we expect from this will have multiple ill effects on so many fronts. And just as we will need massive amounts of energy to adapt to those changes, guess what? We won't be able to afford getting the fossil fuels out of the ground.
There might very well be individual actions that will help someone somewhere. For my part I share my thoughts on sapience and evolution in hope that they will motivate some folk to take action in preparation. I do expect some seed of higher sapient people to succeed in getting through the bottleneck.
Insofar as a general statement about it being true that there are multiple possible futures (and that it is mathematically proven) is vacuous. It carries no predictive or causal power. Moreover, your statement is likely motivated by your own belief about what kind of future will obtain and I suspect you see that possibility different from what I have outlined. Well I hope you are right, but when we are talking about predicting what kinds of scenarios will spin, we should always condition it with uncertainties and not try to make it sound certain by recourse to a claim of mathematical proof. IMO.
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For All,
Some of you may be interested in reading the special section of Science, 2 Aug. 2013 on "Natural Systems in Climate Change". There are several good summaries of the science on CC as well as discussions of models of response by natural systems (meaning biosystems) that are eye opening. For those who have thought CC won't be as bad as some of us have conjectured, well the news isn't good. But for those who see the impacts of CC as wiping out all life you may be pleasantly surprised. There are still many uncertainties about sensitivities of these systems (e.g. ocean surface communities) to temperature and other related factors. Nevertheless the biogeological records of prior die-offs and temperature extremes do not portend a Venus scenario, as some writers have suggested. We'll just have to see what happens!
George
Posted by: George Mobus | August 22, 2013 at 12:13 PM
Keep writing and putting words together like if it really matter and make a difference.
For example you are saying:
The point is that the rule for life on Earth has been an elaborate set of checks and balances that help maintain the biosphere in a sometimes wildly fluctuating, but generally stationary steady-state.
Life has no rule. What point ?
We don't know what life is, but yet we pretend that we know. We know nothing about the outer space and yet we believe that we know what life is.
You write the same useless stuff as other do. You pretend that you know, but you don't know nothing.
Typical pseudo intellectual bullsh??it that has no real use.
Now I will stop reading you.
Posted by: justnobody | August 22, 2013 at 01:04 PM
@justnobody - Nobody is forcing you to visit this blog. It's a forum for serious mature discussion of humane issues. If something upsets you or scares you about the content, why not ask questions or express your measured response or counter-arguments? Merely insulting Professor Mobus and the rest of us visitors is rather primitive. Freedom of speech comes with respect for all parties in a debate.
Posted by: Oliver | August 22, 2013 at 01:24 PM
Nobody is forcing you to visit this blog. It's a forum for serious mature discussion of humane issues.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Thank you. You made my day. You made my laugh.
Please keep the jokes coming.
Posted by: justnobody | August 22, 2013 at 01:57 PM
@justnobody
I have banned only one other person because of uncivil discourse. Anymore comments like this and I will have to ban you as well.
Posted by: George Mobus | August 22, 2013 at 03:22 PM
"Homo sapiens should be called Homo calidus, “man the clever” and definitely not “man the wise.” "-GM
Personally, I thought "Homo Stupidus" was the right taxonomy. :)
Final part of Ugo Bardi's Cassandra Podcasts now UP on Diner Podcasts. Don't miss it!
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2013/08/10/dead-cat-bouncing/
Coming Soon to a Laptop near you, the Doomier side of Nicole Foss, Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth.
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | August 23, 2013 at 04:38 PM
Hi George. Again, I agree with most of this except for the emphasis on sapience being the determining factor and thus the conclusion. I suggest that our sapience is essentially adequate for the task while sociopolitical struggle is the determining factor and that we should focus on the latter with an eye on the former.
How do we predict the possible outcomes? What does a model of sapience indicate?
It is self-evident (to us here) that our species sapience (as a component of a system) has not provided a solution thus far and that the future seems bleaker than ever before. It would be a hasty generalisation to conclude from this alone that we are doomed. I assume your conclusion (that we are doomed as a species) is an extrapolation of the qualities of sapience that you have modelled - that you apply your model of sapience to a model of sociopolitical process (and circumstantial factors: technology, etc.). Have I got this right?
A source of disagreement:
So an important part of this equation would be the model of sociopolitical structures and processes, with a focus on how they change and how they can be stable and collectively beneficial. From the Remember comments you said:
So we might agree that a pivotal question is: what is limiting effect of human wisdom in practice? i.e. what are the sociopolitical possibilities? (Can "power/effectiveness" be gained but those who seek cooperativity?) Again this seems to depend on how we model sociopolitics (consistent with a model of limited sapience, but not defined by the sapience model).
As to the circumstantial factors (technology, the timescale and range of climate change, etc), I don't think this is the source of disagreement.
My comments in the Remember were questioning the explanatory power of the limited 'cleverness' of leaders in explaining current (and past) world events and realities. (I used the word 'wisdom' in the wrong context, which didn't help.) You cleared up some of this for me by acknowledging that there is a significant role played by self-interested agendas. I would position the role of self-interested power structures as the main feature of sociopolitics. I would still question any 'lack of cleverness' paradigm in understanding and explaining sociopolitical realities - this crops up but is difficult to disentangle from discussion of 'wisdom/sapience'. (Is this informing the sociopolitical model?)
If I can introduce a simplistic hypothetical example...
An isolated village of 100 humans. If a few of those villagers were particularly clever and selfish, they, by various mechanisms, might gain power and wealth advantage over the other villagers. If the other villagers recognise this, they would tend to resent this and oppose them. Thus the rulers (leaders with privilege) must use their cleverness and gained advantages (weapons, whatever) to maintain their privilege. Call the leaders 'rulers A'; 'scenario A'; if the scenario persists, 'outcome A'.
If the villagers remove their 'rulers A' and choose new leaders (using their experience of the previous regime to guide their choice), then we have a village led by 'leaders B'. If these new leaders become corrupt over time then we return to an instance of type 'A'. While the leaders and villagers function for collective benefit, call them 'leaders B'; 'scenario B'; and if the scenario persists 'outcome B'.
I suggest that human civilisation has been essentially 'scenario A' with transient glimpses of 'scenario B' . What makes 'outcome B' an impossibility?
(I would say more but don't want to post too much at a time.)
Posted by: Bonce | August 24, 2013 at 01:52 PM
@K-Dog
I think this relates to my 'scenario A'. I would add a qualifier, that if the power structure is corrupting (maintains privilege), then the leaders need not be the most ruthless and selfish for the structure to fail us - the structure needs to be right.I favour your angle:
As I understand the logic, the assertion is "we are doomed and nothing can be done", so the burden of proof is on those making that claim (and I've not read a clear version yet). There is no burden of proof to say: we may or may not be doomed and therefore should try.@Oliver (to K-dog)
@Cantab
Your story of financial trader friends is interesting. Does their culture reflect their innate qualities? or are they people who happen to enter into a pre-existing system? (financial capitalism creates their culture rather than the traders themselves)
If you and I were the world leaders, I'm sure we could sort it out in the medium and long term. In my view, the current effective 'world leaders' aren't motivated to do anything yet because the powers that guide them do not fear their own position (they predict crises for the masses, not themselves). Isn't the burden of proof the other way round here? More hopefully, if the 'doomed' conclusion is tentative, then shouldn't a tentative chance of survival trump any defeatism?@George (to Oliver)
I once tried to probabilistically calculate the moral worth of each individual alive now (in trying to secure beneficial survival) - it made a pretty maths expression. Each of our attempts to secure a better future has more value than we can imagine (magnitudes more than trillions of lives, effectively exponential).
(sorry to butt in again, I might misinterpret the context a bit...)
we could take "there are many possibilities" to be a truism to remind ourselves that any prediction of a complex system might be wrong.I don't understand how the claim that we are doomed can be so strong, considering all the uncertainties in the models and methods for the prediction of a supremely complex system.
Posted by: Bonce | August 24, 2013 at 02:39 PM
@Bonce - Apologies but I find your line of thinking quite hard to follow and understand, but I have a simple question to ask you, in response to your "outcome A" and "outcome B" suppositions.
Why do you think the world has always run on scenario A, rather than scenario B?
You discuss scenario B as if it's a real option in the real world, but I see no evidence from history or the present day that gives me any reason to suppose that scenario B will ever become a reality. You may hope it can come to be, or wish it to happen, but while (of course) it's not impossible in theory, are you really sure in your mind that it's attainable, beyond wishful or magical thinking?
Posted by: Oliver | August 24, 2013 at 03:55 PM
@Oliver, thanks for looking at my A/B scenario
To be specific, I said essentially 'scenario A' with transient glimpses of 'scenario B'. But yes, I characterise 'A' as having a minority class with most of the wealth and power, and, if we look at history, this is pretty much always the case.We are taught a gentleman's history where we are told how 'Good King Thomas' valiantly tried his best to lead his country. But if we are critical (we doubt and question), then we might find evidence that King Thomas was ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest (bumping off rivals, killing thousands in wars for profit, making peasants die of starvation by taking common land, agreeing to meet rebels and then boiling them in oil, etc.). We then have two theories: King Thomas was trying to do his best but making the odd mistake; or King Thomas was essentially pursuing ruthless self-interest. We should develop the theory that is better at explaining the events. Add to this the difficulty in interpreting the record of events (nobody wrote down anything critical of King Thomas).
My question would be, which period of history does not match the general nature of King Thomas? I would say most of it (with only transient glimpses of cooperative systems).
Firtly, just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't (to think otherwise is just generalisation). Circumstances are constantly changing (to say the least). And if we ever attain a proper cooperative system, then that's it - eutopia - done and dusted ('the end of history' as Fukuyama would pretend).To consider what is attainable we first need to critically consider how things are the way they are. If we can model past and present effectively, then that will guide us as to what is possible and how to go about changing things.
The world is facing crises that will ruin the lives of billions. Things aren't too good for the majority of the billions alive now. In my view, a small minority control the vast majority of effective wealth (productive captial) and power (bombs and influence). That can change if the majority struggle against the existing structure. (You might correctly guess from this that I'm against population reduction for political reasons as well as practical morality.)
I'm trying to set out an alternative sociopolitical paradigm (way of looking at how the world works), which isn't easy. I'd best leave it there for now.
Yes, I'm sure it's possible without magic. I just want to reiterate the 'burden of proof' thing. Our starting point for an open question or complex prediction is 'anything is possible'. We can then start reducing the possibilities by reasoning why certain outcomes are effectively impossible. What we are left with is a list of known possibilities. So, yes, I think that it is possible because I've not been convinced that it isn't.And there's a bottom-line: if we are the last chance for intelligent life to survive on this planet, then our actions decide whether future life exists or not. That's at least: 5 billion years of 5 billions of lives (if we stay homo sapiens and don't evolve or propagate). So, if our chance is one in a million, and one billion of us try to save the world, then each of us is responsible for 5b*5b/100 divided by 1m*1b = 250 million long happy lifetimes. Or not.
@George Sorry to post so much on your blog.
Posted by: Bonce | August 24, 2013 at 06:27 PM